A Thing About Web Application Usability

Sometimes it’s amazing to realize how total is Google’s domination in web 2.0 type apps. They have everything. I didn’t even know they have a notebook app. Or an html builder(which is a free hosting service as well).

And then in a review of web 2.0 apps Google gets picked as the top app in almost every category.

Part of the reason for such domination is that they have a broad offering. So most people are already their users. I have a gmail account. So now when they roll out some new service, I can just login with my existing gmail account and voila, I can use the new app. So my barrier to entry is extremely low. It’s easy to test their new app. If it’s good (that’s another important issue) - I become a user.

Now imagine potential-competitor-startup-firm launches their super-cool new app. I want to try it, because everyone’s blogging it. But I don’t want to sign up. Because it will take five minutes. And I will have to tell them stuff about myself. And go to my email (gmail anyone?) and click something to confirm something. And that’s no good.

So the number one lesson, I think, to someone who wants to make a new web app is make your sign up process seamless.

And here is a great example - check out Zoho. They have what seems like a very nice web based office suite. But that’s no biggie. What really got me (and remember how important first time user experience is) is the signup. It’s as quick and as easy to sign up as a new user as it is to log in as an existing user!!

You just tick the “I am a new user” checkbox, and type-in your password twice instead of once. That’s it. No personal info. No signup page. No wizard. No email confirmation. The next page you see is the editor itself (I logged into Zoho Writer).

That’s fun. And this is how apps should be.

I know I am going to make the signup in my apps like this from now on.

By the way, this post was written with Zoho Writer. And yesterday’s was written with Writely (which is Google owned). Maybe I’ll post reviews of the apps later.